


the loophole

by jemmasimns



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, but your heart will sting dont worry, id say tw character death but no one ACTUALLY dies ok, like i just dont do that this isnt angst, more tender than your typical avalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimns/pseuds/jemmasimns
Summary: Ever the savior of the public, Sara was shot in Chile trying to save democracy: two gunshots right in the abdomen. She didn't expect an easy recovery, but that wasn't anything new for an alum of the League. What she really didn't expect? That Agent Ava Sharpe -- the eternally annoyed, tight-bunned, glorified timestream hall monitor -- would be taking her place instead. Ava, whose only job it seemed was to breathe down her neck -- why she would ever take a bullet for her? She wasn't about to wait and find out.OR:ava breaks time to save sara's life in the future. past sara isn't about to let ms. time bureau make that sacrifice





	1. i: santiago

Unending lines of hungry people stood in the hot humidity of the Chilean summer. It was 1973, and the Waverider hovered over a mass of state police like a watchful hawk. The team sat in the midst of a watershed moment for Chile: the coup d’etat that shattered years of thriving democracy, welcoming in a new era of military dictatorship. It was these parts of the past that Sara found hard to dwell in. There are periods of history where human life itself is in danger of complete violation, where every innocent death drives you further towards intervening in the facts of the past. But, Sara has come to learn, when you meddle with past evils--

“You meddle with everything else, too!” Ava repeated, breath heightening in frustration, “how many times do I have to tell you that? How can I trust you to not to continually crash land your crazy-plane through the timeline when you repeatedly show a lack of respect for the tenets of the Bureau?”

Sara squinted her eyes and sighed. This was not the first time this week that she was staring at the hologrammed face of Agent Ava Sharpe with growing frustration. This argument of theirs was getting ritualistic.

“Agent Sharpe, has anyone ever told you that you remind them  _ intimately _ of a talking textbook? Like, the resemblance is uncanny,” Sara responded with a cold, barely-there smile. Ava’s lips parted in surprise.

“I can’t believe―the nerve, the unprofessionalism―” she began, cheeks reddening, but then she stopped, “look, Captain Lance― _ if you can really even call yourself that _ ―this is my last warning to you. If I have to make this call again, the Legends are going to be dead in the timestream. Don’t make me regret giving you another chance.”

Before Sara can make a final quip, the line goes dry. Rippling anger curses through her lower stomach. How could she even know what it takes to lead a timeship? To have to visit the past and do nothing in the face of mass murder, of genocide? The correct answer is she doesn’t know shit.  _ Humph _ .

Interrupting her increasingly murderous internal monologue is Ray Palmer, who attracts her attention with a solemn knock on her office door.

“Come in,” she says, rubbing her temples.

“Hi Sara, sorry to disturb your, uh, your weekly chat with Agent Sharpe, but I just thought you might like to know that we’ve gotten an updated report on the situation in Santiago.” 

“You’re not disturbing anything, trust me. Agent Sharpe is basically time’s glorified hallway monitor. That woman can bring the fight to me whenever she wants,” she boasted. Ray resisted the urge to giggle at Sara’s facial expression, an obvious attempt to repress her frustration. 

“Good to know. Anyway, we’ve determined the source of the anachronism… apparently someone is trying to stop the election that removes dictator Augusto Pinochet from power and returns Chile to its former democracy. Firestorm just spotted our guy tearing through a bunch of military guys guarding the presidential palace. Looks like he’s on his way up to the top.”

Sara nodded, taking a final look back at where Ava Sharpe’s face was moments ago. 

“Come on Ray, let’s go show Ms. Sharpe what real time-policing looks like,” Sara growled, grabbing her bo staff and a time-appropriate gun. Ray gave her an apprehensive salute, a little bit afraid of the look in her eyes.

* * *

  
“She was shot twice in combat,” Sara heard Gideon report when she opened her eyes. Everything was blurry―not in a way that was overly alarming, more in the way that someone had taken out her contacts, but she squinted angrily into the air regardless. 

“Oh, fuck,” she said about two seconds after, suddenly becoming aware of the shooting pain in her abdomen. It felt like something had stabbed her with a really tiny knife. Or like someone shot her. Oh, wait.

“Who the fuck shot me?” Sara yelled to no-one in particular.

“Maybe it was the two dozen or so Chilean presidential guards that you decided to attack without backup?” came a chiding voice from nearby.

“Affirmative,” Gideon inputted.

Sara’s head whipped to the side. In the blur, she had yet to notice the person sitting to her immediate left. Tall. Long blonde hair. Were those blue eyes? Oh.

“I came here to commandeer the waverider,” Ava started, her tone notably not carrying its usual bite, “but I thought I should check on your condition before I proceeded.”

“Commandeer the waverider? Over my dead body,” Sara assured, attempting to be intimidating. The charade mostly failed; her sad, limp body getting in the way of her usual presence. Ava bit her lip. The usual aggravation that Sara stirred in her was hard to muster at a sight like this. The squinty eyes. The pointed finger. Her exasperated attempts to scare Ava away from the medical table were almost… almost cute. Ava’s stomach curled. They were not cute. They were dumb. 

Ava shoved down whatever it was that she just felt. “Finally, you get my point,” she smiled dryly, “your ‘dead’ body is exactly why my team isn’t here to taser your associates. It’s in the Time Bureau codes that a captain cannot be tried for a crime while injured. So, I’m here to stay with you until that no longer applies.” 

“Thanks, but I don’t need a companion. All I’m hearing is that my bleeding out caused you to momentarily pause arresting me. Aren’t I a lucky ducky,” Sara spoke dryly, smirking. 

“Is there something in the water on the Waverider that makes everyone here this infuriating?” Ava rolled her eyes, shoving down an impulse to smile at Sara’s dumb word choice. 

“I think it might be a side effect of time travel. Definitely true for your case,” Sara raised her eyebrows. She could keep this going all night. Sara realized, without the perils of life or death decisions hanging in the air, teasing Ava was a sport she really reveled in. 

Ava did not seem to share her thoughts. 

“Gideon, please see to it that Sara goes to bed before ten,” Ava says, matter-of-fact, and raises from her chair. Sara furrows her eyebrows. 

“Gideon doesn’t report to you,” Sara laughed, “but nice try.”

“Oh, really? I’m heading out now, thanks Gideon. Be seeing you, Ms. Lance,” Ava smiled, tight-lipped and unreadable. A time portal opened behind her, and she stepped in seamlessly.

“Of course, Captain Sharpe,” Gideon’s voice radiated around the med-lab. Sara’s mouth dropped open.

“Gideon, did Sharpe drug you?” Sara yelled in disbelief.

“No, sorry. Just thought it’d be funny,” Gideon informed. Sara rolled her eyes in disbelief. Shot twice, put under house arrest by Miss Tight-Ass Time Bureau, and played by a talking computer. She laughed dryly, closing her eyes. Still not her worst day this week.

* * *

 

Before she could doze off into a much-needed slumber, she was rudely awoken by another voice. A familiar, goofy, annoyingly upbeat one.

  
“Ray,” Sara gritted, her eyes still closed, “what do you want?”

“Um,” Ray said, his voice gone down an octave, “I actually have some sorta-bad, very bad, terrible news. Oh, but first, how are you? You know, gun-shot and all.”

Sara’s eyes shot open. Like she needed something else to worry about.

“Just get out with it. I’m fine. My body heals faster than most humans,” Sara said, completely serious.

“Sara, do you think you’re like an alien, or something? Like I know my superpower is a suit, but yours is just like, swords and stuff,” Ray joked. Sara waved a limp hand in-front of his face, begrudging him to end whatever lecture this was.

“Fine,” he said, clearing his throat, “so, um, Agent Sharpe is… she’s dead.”

Sara’s blood went cold. For a moment, she couldn’t even feel the wound radiating pain in her abdomen. She knew this was impossible, but the words still hung like a rope around her lungs; she never expected to feel so… what the fuck is this?

“No. She’s not,” Sara insisted, using all of her strength to sit up and glare Ray straight in the eyes, “I literally just spoke with her. She was going on like she usually does about how she’s going to arrest me and put me in her closet or whatever.”

Ray shook his head, “Sara, I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. I just talked to Gary and he told me that Agent Sharpe was on a secret mission in Chile, somewhere in the 1970s. She was killed in action by one of the presidential guards.” 

Sara paused, her mind whirling. If Ava was in Chile, 1973, she would have seen her. Ava would have told her she was on the same mission that she had been. What reason would she have had to go there right after Sara? Did the Legends not finish their job? 

“Why in the hell would she be in Chile? Did we not fix the anachronism?” Sara prodded, eyebrows knit.  _ What if… _

“We never went to Chile, Sara,” Ray said, beginning to look concerned, “at least not yet. You were going to direct Gideon to plot a course there, but then you know, the whole accident with Stein and the crazy cowboy.”

“What are you even talking about? I got shot in Chile. There must be a mixup. Stein and the  _ what _ ?” Sara was completely flustered, but more than that she was overwhelming confused. She just had this urge to  _ go _ , wound be damned. Someone out there just fucked with time and traded in Agent Sharpe. Her heart pounded, and she didn’t worry why. She was not going to wait another second to find out.

“So you’re serious,” Sara said grimly, “in that case, well―Gideon, plot a course.”

“What?” Ray questioned, eyebrows shooting up, “Sara, you’re obviously just confused.”

“To where, Captain Lance?”

“To Chile, 1973.”


	2. carménère

With a brutal halt, the timeship shifted against the flow of the timestream and came to a shrieking pause, waking Sara from her nap.

“Gideon, what the fuck? My body is going to tear in half if you keep driving this boat like a New York City taxi,” Sara groaned, reaching for the ace bandages surrounding her abdomen.

“Sorry, Captain, I’m afraid that was my fault,” Nate interrupted, entering the medbay with a handful of maps and newspapers. _Typical_. Sara rolled her eyes, and let out a breath. Like anything was ever easy with these lovable imbeciles. Sara patted the chair next to her absentmindedly, the sight quickly causing her mind to sting with the reminder that a perfectly alive Ava Sharpe had been there just hours before. Sara shook her head. Even with a bullet lodged in her gut, time travel still managed to take a larger toll on her grasp of reality than it ever did her body.

“Explain yourself before I hurl,” Sara said, leaning back down.

“Of course,” he said brightly, plopping a newspaper in Sara’s lap. It’s written in Spanish.

“Not all of us speak sixty languages,” Sara grumbled, “or, well, like more than four.”

“Yes, yes, sorry. For your case, I can’t speak a word of tibetan,” Nate laughed, running his finger across the page and pointing to a blurry picture of a woman in sunhat and long, black, standard-issue pants. Oh. _Jesus._

“That’s Agent fucking Sharpe, isn’t it?” Sara laughed, smiling for the first time in what felt like days. The photograph was truly hilarious. Ava stood on a literal soapbox, wearing a gigantic, flowery sun hat and pants straight out of a Marshall’s catalogue in the middle of the summer, in Chile. Everyone was looking at her like she was a maniac. (It’s because she kind of is.)

Sara briefly dwelled on the glorious expression on Sharpe’s face she would get to see if she showed her the photograph, how she couldn’t wait to tease her endlessly about it. Her enthusiasm faltered when she realized that, for all intents and purposes, Ava Sharpe was dead in this timeline. Her stomach fell and she frowned.

She didn’t let herself wonder about when she started caring this much. She’s just a friend, Sara thinks. A coworker. Above all, Sara concludes begrudgingly, she is an asset to the mission, as much as she hates to say so.

“Hilarity aside, what does the rest of this article say? Any clue where she is or why she is?” Sara lifts an eyebrow. Nate nods, flipping to the next page; there’s another photo of Agent Sharpe. She’s being lifted away by the presidential guard. There’s a large, emboldened caption beneath the photo.

“What does it say?” Sara asks, biting her lip. Her skin is crawling just looking at Ava, so helpless, but with such a dumb, brave face.

“An American, assassinated,” Nate whispered, closing the newspaper slowly. He saw Sara’s expression fall, her eyes glaze over. He hadn’t seen the captain overcome with this type of look in a long, long time, “but that’s good news, Sara. The article being dated means we have an exact time and place to investigate. We’re going to get to her before they do.”

Sara regained her composure, nodding. Someone had to save this annoyingly useful idiot from her unplanned demise.

“Good news is, thanks to a little of my own direction, we’re already here,” Nate grinned, waving into existence a holographic projection of the world outside the timeship. They were back in Chile, but not in 1973. Nate explained that he had taken the liberty of charting a course directly to a day preceding the events of the photograph: March 1st, 1988.

“It seems that the Legends had been a bit off in their timing in the parallel timeline,” Nate explained, guiding an injured Sara into the ship’s de-facto dressing room. She limped steadily behind, reaching into Gideon’s magic closet and pulling out a simple white blouse and trousers, outfitted with extra cotton padding around the location of her wound.

“I’d say you should stay here, but I worry that you’d knock me unconscious if I suggested it,” Nate smiled. Sara smiled back.

“Smart guy,” she gave him a thumbs up. Nate sighed.

Chile was different in the ten years since she’d last seen it. Instead of arriving on the precipice of a military takeover, they now faced a country who was heatedly debating its future. A referendum was set to decide―either yes or no―if dictator Pinochet should continue his rule. Sara had not often been witness to an event like this: a time and a place where a people got to _vote_ to overthrow their dictator. It was as fascinating as it was inspiring. Nevertheless, the feeling of awe didn’t last. The radiant pain in the pit of her stomach made itself clear again, and she knew it had nothing to do with the bullet hole. She couldn’t forget why they were here.

“So, Nate, what’s the plan?” Sara said, lowering a pair of sunglasses down from her temple. Nate looked around, excited as ever to be witnessing another seminal moment in history. She snapped her fingers in front of his face, reminding him why they were here. He winced at her _I’m warning you_ frown.

“Sorry, sorry, yeah,” Nate coughed, “by my calculations, Agent Sharpe should be arriving in town square in a few hours. I plan to engage with her and figure out what she’s doing here before the presidential guard show up to make a display out of her. You should stay back and watch.”

“Cool plan, not going to happen,” Sara laughed dryly. She reached for a long, fallen branch and broke it in half. _Boom. A walking stick._ Sara smiled to herself, “I’m going to talk to Miss Time Bureau, and you’re going to watch out for goons. You got that? But first, we’re going to have a pint at this bar. I may not know Spanish, but I know _alcoholico_.”

Nate shook his head in disbelief, “you just called yourself… oh, nevermind.”

The local bar was basically infested. Nothing like political chaos to make someone want to reach for the closest beer. Men lined up shots and downed them one after another, waving abrasively at the bartender to refill their glasses. As Sara entered, she surveyed the room and found a member of the presidential guard watching the men with thinly veiled disgust. As prideful as ever, she limped up to the bar and slouched onto a dusty barstool. The line of men regarded her briefly, a few shooting her drunk, playful eyes. She shot back a death glare. They squinted, confused, and went back to their drinking. It seemed to do the trick.

“Sara, you cannot possibly be getting drunk right now,” Nate laughed, disbelieving. He shuffled up to Sara from behind, earning a few sideways looks from the scorned guys from across the bar. He sent them an awkward smile.

“Not drunk,” Sara shook her head, squeezing Nate’s shoulder, “just getting in character.” The bartender regarded her, waving his hand to signal that he’d be over in a moment.

“Character?” Nate questioned. Sara wasn’t usually one for convoluted plans. Or plans at all.  Sara’s tactics could be summarized by, well: punch, kick, see what happens.

“C’mon, Nate, why don’t you let me have five minutes of fun, hm? See if I can change history in heels,” Sara grinned. Nate sighed and held up his hands, relenting. He pulled up a barstool next to her and took out his book of field notes to lay carefully on the bar. Sara waved over the bartender. The men from across the bar watched her movements with curiosity.

“You guys got wine? I’m feeling classy,” Sara asked, leaning towards the bartender with an easy smile. The bartender eyed her, regarding her unusual request. Even so, he nodded, and opened a cabinet in the back.

“Mm, the Carménère looks perfect. The whole bottle, please,” Sara grinned, pointing at a tall, elegant bottle in the back. It was covered in roses and other ornate floral patterns. She had read in Nate’s research that it was regarded as the emblematic wine of Chile, and a personal favorite of the rich and powerful in the eighties. Her deductions were clearly correct, as she quickly noticed how the guard’s gaze had shifted from the locals to herself. He was now wearing a different expression entirely, a smug confidence that Sara returned with a small, shy smile.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Nate whispered, observing Sara’s successful attempt at across-the-room flirtation, “ _this_ is your plan?”

“Of course not,” Sara laughed lightly, maintaining eye contact with the incoming guard, “come on, Nate, have some faith; I would never sleep with a fascist.” Sara grinned. Nate rolled his eyes, hiding his amusement at Sara’s plans. _Whatever those plans were_. He took a sip of some water, and watched the guard wrestle his way onto the barstool next to her.

“Ma’am,” the guard said in a low tone, his hand coming to rest instantly on Sara’s forearm, “why don’t I buy you that bottle? A woman like you shouldn’t have to pay for such things.”

Sara’s face froze at the contact, maintaining a gentle, unreadable smile.

“Why… that would be lovely, thank you,” she all but whispered. Nate balked at the interaction. Watching Sara seduce basically half the ladies of the Victorian era was one thing, yet this was somehow much worse. He shook his head and kept his eyes tied to his notebook. The pair chatted for awhile, sharing the bottle and clinking glossy red glasses as Nate made note of their surroundings. He checked his watch. They had around thirty minutes before Sharpe was due to make an appearance outside, and Nate wasn’t sure where Sara’s ‘plan’ even fit on that timeline.

Before he could chide her to remember their purpose here, he was shoved aside by Sara’s elbow. The guard had taken her hand and they were now making their way to the bathrooms. Nate watched with disbelief as the single stall opened, closed, and locked. His mouth was agape as he waited to hear any sort of noise, but he sat in silence for a couple minutes before Sara exited, newly adorned in full military getup.

Nate made his way over to her, shaking his head, “Sara, _what_? All of that for some baggy disguise?” He peeked into the bathroom stall to find the guard knocked unconscious on the floor, head nearly in the toilet. He resisted the urge to laugh.

“Not just a disguise,” Sara shook her head, patting Nate affectionately on the shoulder, “our guy’s got the _goods_. Keys to the palace. Badge. The works. I’m just keeping these old wares warm for ya, kid. No one’s gonna believe I’m Ignacio.” She gave Nate a final, winning grin and a pair of finger guns. He laughed lightly, astonished. This woman was going to get him killed, and he was practically made of steel.

“Whatever you say, Captain,” he nodded, massaging his temple. She glowed, quickly removing the outfit in the corner of the stall and tossing it Nate’s way. He blushed, never getting used to Sara’s apparent disregard for contemporary modesty.

The two exited the bar just in time to witness exactly what they came for: Ava Sharpe looking ridiculously out of place as a tourist of the Chilean dictatorship. Sara’s hands went straight to her mouth, covering a giggle she couldn’t help. She felt a strange flush in her cheeks, a helpless adoration for the way the woman looked so incredibly dumb in loafers and a floral button-up. It was so odd seeing Sharpe this way, not as a tight-bunned agent of the Bureau but as this adorable, flailing spy. God―her cheeks felt so hot. _Must be the wine._

It took only seconds for the two to lock eyes. Ava’s mouth dropped open, agape with a mixture between surprise and… sadness? She shook her head, looking in disbelief at Sara. Sara furrowed her eyebrows, uneasy under Sharpe’s gaze. It wasn’t a look she’d ever seen before: not angry, not teasing, not disapproving. It was sad, worried, protective. It made Sara’s stomach jump. This wasn’t the Ava she knew two days ago, all high and mighty. This Ava was scared.

Sara’s need to unlock the why behind that change urged her forward, but she only made it two steps before Nate intervened, hooking his hand into Sara’s elbow and rooting her to her place in the ground.

“Look,” Nate whispered harshly, and Sara broke her gaze from Ava for a moment to observe a dozen or so guards pointing glances at the agent from several vantage points. One of them seemed to signal something to another, and a couple fell in formation, making a beeline towards her.

“Stay here, Sara, _please_ ,” Nate begged with his eyes, and released Sara’s arm. It took everything in Sara to follow his direction and sit still, her eyes glued to his back as he fell into character, his shoulders raised and his walk slow. She caught Ava’s stare again, and her eyes were still on her; despite the obvious gang approaching her, Sara was all that Ava seemed to see.

“ _Go back_ ,” Ava whispered, her tone harsh, but not cold. She look so frightened, but not of the guard―frightened _for_ her, for Sara. She was looking at her like she’d seen a ghost. Unsure how to feel about it, Sara just felt angry, her hands curling into fists. Agent Sharpe, infamous for yelling at Sara for being in places in time that she shouldn’t be, was out here throwing away her own goddamn handbook. Having the audacity to tell _Sara_ to turn around and leave her for the wolves. That may be how Sharpe operates, but that’s not Sara. She doesn’t leave one of her own behind.

She didn’t pause to think about when she had started to think of Sharpe as one of her own. When she started thinking of Ava as an us and not a them.

Instead, she hobbled forward, forgetting Nate’s instructions from moments before. His plan wasn’t working. The guards were encroaching, and his pleads of _Pinochet sent me_ held no weight to these hired mercenaries. Ava, unarmed and unguarded, practically fell into the arms of the soldiers.

“ _Fuck_ , Sharpe, at least pretend you’re going to put up a fight,” Sara cursed as she whipped her gun from out of its thigh-holster. She shot at the guard’s hand, making him scream out in pain and release his hold on Sharpe. Ava, not missing a beat, took the opportunity to kneel her other captor in the groin, simultaneously slicing him directly across the torso. Nate caught on fast, shooting Sara a disapproving squint in the midst of the all-out chaos. Sara gasped as she watched a bullet fly by her neck, her eyes tracking it in slow motion as she watched it connect with the mercenary behind her. In the panic, she had yet to notice that she hadn’t actually avoided the shot at all―Ava’s hands grabbing at the front her blouse with a bone-cracking tightness, pulling her so close that she could feel Ava’s heartbeat reverberating in her chest.

“Do you have a death wish?” Ava breathed out suddenly, and Sara could feel her breath on her neck. Ava Sharpe had saved her. Ava Sharpe had saved her _again_.

Sara’s senses, trained to the finest grain by her years in the League of Assassins, picked up in an instant the difference in Ava’s touch, the unabashed delicacy behind it. Ava held Sara to her chest as if she might break, as if she hadn’t been beaten to the ground before—like she hadn’t _died_ in a past life, for god’s sake. Ava’s fingers curled around Sara’s middle, tugging her flush with her own in a way that almost seemed shy, as if they weren’t dodging bullets but instead entangled together somewhere more private, more intimate. Looking up, almost with a question, she met Ava’s eyes, and Ava looked back at her with accidental confirmation; Sara saw something gentle there, the way Ava’s lips turned upwards, the way she bit her lip and looked like she _missed_ Sara, like this wasn’t the first time their heads were millimeters apart.

Sara was quickly reminded that this was not the time to think about the sudden onslaught of butterflies in her stomach. Almost as soon as Ava had tugged her in, she let her go, Sara’s instincts kicking in as she plummeted her staff into the chest of an incoming guard. He fell to the ground in a daze, and Ava followed suit with a swift kick to the side of the head, knocking him out cold. Sara found her eyes again, and they looked vulnerable, like Sara had momentarily been privy to something Ava wasn’t yet ready to share. Before she could ask, Ava cut her off.

“You’re messing with the timeline again,” Ava said, expression flat, refusing to reveal the tenderness there, “weren’t my orders clear, Sara?” Her voice was shaking.

“They always are,” Sara whispered, telling the truth. As certain as Ava’s words were, everything about her looked shaken. She always looked so sure of herself, parading around the Waverider with an effortless sense of pride and guarded condescension. This Ava was barely keeping up the facade, looking like a zombie in loafers.

“I don’t have much time,” Ava announced suddenly, more to herself than anyone else. She grabbed a badge off one of the attackers and brushed the dirt off her pants, stalking away from them with an urgency, “take her home, Nate.”

Nate looked to Sara, unsure how to proceed. He was surprised to see Sara equally as disheveled, an unexplainable redness growing on her cheeks.

Truthfully, the sight of Ava walking away from her was jaunting. No, it was infuriating. All of that unmistakable softness in her eyes just a moment before she turned her back to Sara, walking away like there was nothing left to say. Sara laughed coldly to herself. In a way, it was the most typical thing she could do.

“I’m not going anywhere, Sharpe,” Sara called after her, “at least not until you tell me what you’re doing in 80’s Chile dressed like you just got dropped off from chaperoning the school field trip.”

Ava shook her head and whipped around, suddenly coming towards Sara at a scary pace. Within seconds she had Sara pinned to the bar entrance, one arm pressing Sara down and another wrapped around her wrist, restricting her movement. Sara’s breath hitched, noticing the careful way Ava avoided any contact with her wound, the way her fingers wrapped around Sara’s pulse point and gently pressed down. She made contact with Ava’s eyes, searching them for any explanation.

Abandoning her walls, Sara squeezed at the hand that Ava had wrapped around her wrist, stroking her finger down tenderly. Ava’s eyelids fluttered shut. Sara felt a weird familiarity to the too-intimate moment, as if she and Ava had done this dance a million times before. Maybe they had. Maybe in different ways. Maybe with harsher words. Maybe with their fists instead of their thumbs. Her stomach sinking with foreign feelings, Sara was just left with a single question.

“Why did you die?” Sara asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Ava froze, opening her eyes again.

“It really is obvious, Sara,” Ava smiled, voice full of uncertainty as she backed away from Sara and released the pressure on her chest. Then, with a sudden force of a motion, she raised her fist and knocked Sara across the head, knocking her out cold, “so you don’t.”

Nate, never before caught in such a physical manifestation of office politics, simply watched as Ava pressed a kiss to Sara's forehead, let her down carefully to the floor, and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you're liking the fic so far! the story is definitely going to take its time in getting sara and ava on the same page with their feelings (... probably because they're basically from two parallel timelines rn ...) but ooooh guys you don't even know how cute the journey is. i know you probably don't see it from how things are going so far but the comfort/hurt fluff is so real. just you wait. please lmk what you're liking/don't like/questions in the comments, as always.


	3. descubrimiento

Sara knows she’s awake but she doesn’t  _ feel _ awake; it’s like she’s paralyzed, her eyes open, but the muscles and tendons remain on hold, waiting silently, patiently for her synapses to fire and give the go ahead. Sara knows what dying feels like so she knows this isn’t it, but it’s not too far away either, so she stays calm but not too calm, fidgeting mentally as she takes in her surroundings: the familiarity of the ship’s medbay, the glossy coating of the screens and wires that monitor her wellbeing. 

What she didn’t mentally prepare for is Ava―hair down and mussed, shirt slightly unbuttoned―strolling into the room with sure footing, coming straight to Sara’s side with a small smile on her lips. Sara couldn’t move, but she swears she felt her pulse in her throat, her body responding to the sight of the other woman. She tried to open her mouth but her lips were stuck together like cement, so she looked blankly ahead. Ava stared at her with the same fragility that she had seen days before, that look of earnest worry. It didn’t sit well with Sara, never someone other people took care of. Never someone other people  _ saved _ . 

“You’re definitely going to kill me for this,” Ava laughed shyly to herself, towering over Sara and raking her body with her gaze, running her eyes up from her feet to her forehead. Sara couldn’t help but blush, overwhelmed by the level of intimacy and  _ care _ Ava radiated through just a look. It didn’t make any sense; Ava  _ hated _ her, well, atleast actively disliked her and nearly every executive decision she’d ever made in their shared line of work. Sara didn’t really hate her back, no, but she definitely didn’t understand...  _ this _ . At least, she had never… considered it. She tried to wiggle her fingers again, but: nothing. Ava bit her lip and lowered her hand slowly over Sara’s face; she paused, just for a moment, before brushing her thumb over Sara’s cheek and cupping her face in her hand. Sara’s heart pounded in her chest, the tenderness of Ava’s hold spreading warmth throughout her chest. 

Barely a second passed before Ava rescinded her hand, and Sara hated the way she shamelessly missed the contact. She hadn’t exactly  _ felt _ a lot since she re-emerged from the lazarus pit. There is no real manual to rebirth, and Sara certainly hadn’t been given any instructions. What Sara had come to realize was that everything emotional had to be relearned, re-experienced. Everything felt like a new first. She hated it―how Ava’s thumb stroking a line down her face made her feel like she was in high school again, like Sandy Lund was pressing her lips to the side of Sara’s mouth on prom night, like she was seventeen and didn’t know anything outside the walls of her Star City bedroom. The side of her face, still unmoving, tingled warmly at the feeling.

“I’ve never really done this thing before,” Ava mused to herself, a small, regretful smile on her face. She reached into her pocket, extracting a gun that had to be a century old, running her fingers down it, “you know, break the rules.  _ My rules _ . It’s hilarious, I know. I can hear you laughing. Do you know I re-read the Time Bureau bible at least a dozen times before I decided to do this? I wanted to know  _ exactly _ which rules I was breaking. How many. In which order. I could practically prosecute myself.” Ava laughed, and it was earnest. As if she was really sharing it with Sara.

“The serum I gave you should have you knocked out cold. Gave you a whole millimeter―isn’t that insane? For someone so tiny, knocking you out is like beating down a thousand pound bull,” Ava grinned, reaching down to move a hair out of Sara’s face. Sara’s whole body burned, wanting nothing more to reach out to grab Ava’s hand, to _ stop _ her from whatever dumb plan she had convinced herself of. Sara had never felt such utterly conflicting feelings for another person―anger and affection, frustration and confusion. Not since the pit. Maybe not since forever.

“Now I have to go,” Ava whispered, squatting down to be face-to-face to Sara. Sara searched her eyes, and found peaceful resignation there. She knew that look―it was the look of someone who had something to sacrifice for, something to give  _ a life _ for―“but I can’t thank you enough, Sara. Thank you for giving me the happiest year of my life. A year ago, I would have resigned from the Time Bureau if you told me I’d have felt this way about you, the crick in my back, the brave fool of a captain who always got in the way of my well-laid plans. Turns out I was the big fool all along, huh?”

With that, she pressed a tender, chaste kiss to Sara’s forehead and turned around. Sara’s skin burned, and she wanted nothing more than to reach up and run a finger over her forehead, hold onto that feeling like a lifeline. Ava opened a portal. Walked straight through, and Sara could feel the hot winds of Chile in the summer, the air of Carménère and tired, broken bodies. Nevertheless, before Sara could scream out, she was overcome with a blinding migraine, a pulsating pain in her head that made her vision go blank. 

She woke again with a startle. She was screaming, yelling like she had been drowned. Nate came running in, made it to her side within seconds and pressed a caring hand on her forearm.

“Sara! Sara, what’s wrong? It’s okay,” he said in a low tone, voice full of uncertainty. He patted her arm awkwardly until she calmed down. Finally grounding herself, she stared at her fingers, wiggling them around with no problem. She lifted each leg up and down. Okay.  _ Okay.  _ She was fine. But there was no way that was just a dream. Nate looked at her with worry and slight amusement as she lifted each limb like a newborn finding its footing.

“I just saw Agent Sharpe,” Sara gritted, breathless, “god, I  _ cannot  _ with that woman.”

“You just  _ saw _ her?” Nate asked, an eyebrow raised, “I’m sorry Sara, but you’ve been out cold since she knocked you out in Chile. I watched her escape towards the presidential palace before I took you back to Gideon to make sure you were okay.”

Sara felt that familiar anger rise again in her chest as she remembered the events of yesterday. She massaged her temples, trying not to let her emotions bubble over. She wasn’t dreaming. She  _ knows _ she wasn’t dreaming. It was something else, something different―

“I think I had a vision,” Sara recounted, eyebrows knit, “like those migraines Stein used to have about his daughter―whatever happens when history is cementing in a different way than it did before, like the world is flooding your head with your new reality. It hurts like a bitch.”

Nate laughed. The rest of the team had seemed to have heard the yelling and came in behind to check in. Jax leaned in from the door with wide eyes, and Sara gave him a firm thumbs up.

“Captain’s fine,” Sara groaned, still managing to flash a grin, “shutting me up takes more than the average amount of head-knocking.”

“Glad to hear it, but just when did you plan on informing the rest of the team of your attempts to seemingly change seminal Chilean history?” Stein barked in his usual reprimanding tone, making his way through the doorway as he shoved Jax politely aside. 

Sara smirked, waving him off, “no, Stein, not changing.  _ Fixing _ . Isn’t that what we do? Not my fault it’s not a time pirate we’re chasing but an over-eager agent of the Time Bureau.” 

“An agent of the Time Bureau?” he questioned, his eyebrows knitting sharply as they always do as his brain runs through mazes, “oh, you don’t mean..?”

“Yes,” Sara quipped, rising steadily from her seat on the medbay. Her head hurt like hell, but at least now the bullet wound was mostly background noise, “I do. As you all must know by now, Agent Sharpe died in Chile. Wasn’t supposed to happen. Think of it as an aberration―”

“But it’s not, Sara,” Stein said sharply, “you know more than anyone that a death cannot be reversed.”

Sara grimaced, the ghost of Laurel tightening its coils around her heart, “I know,” she breathed, “but this isn’t like  _ that _ . This death is stoppable, it’s not in the books. It’s not even concrete yet. I  _ know  _ it. My brain is practically God’s easel right now, trust me. I’m being flooded with a very different Ava Sharpe reality, and, trust me, I would  _ love _ to get her out of my head. All I can do is try to right whatever wrong happened here.” 

The team was silenced, taking in her words. They had faced situations like this before. They reversed assassinations all the time, stopped people from killing other people in place of other people. Who lived and died was always in flux, and knowing who was  _ supposed _ to die and  _ when _ was really only God’s gamble. 

But Sara wasn’t exactly a philosopher. 

“All right, if there are no further questions,” Sara shot them all a tight-lipped smile, and the team relented, returning to their usual bickering, “so, Nate? What do you got?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Nate smiled, giddy like a school boy, “this ship is basically historian heaven. I can ask Gideon about any minute change in history I’m searching for and, well, voila. It’s incredible.” Sara smiled, but snapped a finger in-front of his face. 

“Right, right, yeah,” he said, shaking away his enthusiasm, “so I reviewed the newspapers in Chile from when we intervened. Looks like our little tussle bought Ava some time. She was able to sneak into the presidential palace undetected and kill the guy we were originally after―the time pirate Leonardo―but alerted the guards in the process, so she was captured. And… you can guess what happened next.”

Sara’s heart fell in her chest, “so, she’s still dead.”

“Yeah,” Nate frowned.

“We need to try again,” Sara gritted, already burning with a need to do  _ something _ , “thing is, I have no idea  _ what _ to do. Last time we tried to help her, she knocked me out cold. For trying to  _ help  _ her. Some coworker.”

Nate laughed, but his mind was still frozen on the image of Ava pressing a kiss to Sara’s forehead as she lowered her limp body to the ground. He frowned. He wasn’t sure if it was a good time to mention it to the captain, if there was  _ ever  _ a good time… 

“You know who we need to talk to?” Sara’s eyes lit up with an idea, and Nate looked at her questionably. He could see the eagerness in her eyes, the desperation to find a solution to a problem that was obviously eating more and more on her with each failed attempt.

“Who?” he returned, cautious.

“Gary,” Sara grinned.

Gary. Or atleast, what  _ used _ to be Gary; it was hard for Sara to pair the image of that man with the person she was looking at now: a deflated, barely-cognizant depressive who looked like he had spent the past three hours twirling a pencil. She hadn’t really paused to think about the ramifications of Sharpe’s death on people outside the Waverider, but the fact of the matter was that she was second in command to the Director. She was a big deal at the Bureau, and a lot of people here really cared for her. Sara was reluctantly beginning to understand why. 

After a few moments of repeating his name, Sara snapped her fingers in front of Gary’s face. His eyes shot up; embarrassed, he straightened his tie and put on as much of a polite smile as he could muster.

“Captain Lance,” he addressed her, giving her a strange salute, “how can I h-help you?” Sara’s eyebrows furrowed at the way his voice shook. He obviously wasn’t taking the death well. Not only was his respect for Ava a bit obsessive, it also guided his entire purpose at the Bureau. Without her, well… he looked like a lost chickadee. 

“We’re, err, investigating the… circumstances... of Agent Sharpe’s death. So like, if you got any of her shit, I really would love to see it,” Sara asked, patting Gary on the shoulder; she had attempted to be reassuring in her request, but from Nate’s look she seemed to have come off more like a bank robber interrogating a teller for the key to the vault.

Nevertheless, his eyes immediately shined at the mention of Sharpe’s name. He nodded fervently and opened his desk drawer faster than a bullet, extracting an office key and an iPhone with an obnoxiously protective case. It looked like a cinder block.  _ Definitely know whose that is.  _ Sara smirked. 

“Here,” Gary said, shoving the items into Sara’s hands, “just… I hope you do what the legends are good at, Miss Lance.”

Looking into his eyes, she saw the pleading there. She smiled back at him sadly. She knew exactly what he meant to say.

It took only moments to access Sharpe’s office. To say it was exactly what Sara expected is an understatement. It is  _ more than _ exactly what Sara expected. The entire room was two-toned (dark blue and beige, was she kidding?). It had like two objects  _ maximum _ that Sara could call remotely sentimental, and one of them was a picture of Ava’s cat. If she didn’t know Sharpe, she’d call the whole thing deeply sad. 

But she did know her, and all the sight did was make her heart ache. She didn’t pause to think about when Ava’s obsessive need to be organized had begun to make her grin like an idiot. Before Nate could quirk an eyebrow at her expression, she transformed it quickly to a frown and plopped down in Ava’s office chair, twirling in circles.

“If I was Ava Sharpe breaking a rule for the first time ever, what would I do first?” Sara whispered to herself, staring inquisitively at the incredibly boring wallpaper. She surveyed the room one last time before her eyes landed on the cinder block iPhone. It was always a start. Maybe she called her parents, or a friend, or her cat, or something.

Sara opened Sharpe’s iPhone and swiped around. Sara laughed, because seriously: her lock screen was literally just… blue. She has never met a woman more standard issue. She laughed again to herself before pressing the home button, and her home screen is…

Um. 

Sara’s heart is about to break out of her _ fucking _ chest. She drops the phone in her lap as she feels her pulse get caught in her throat, a mixture of warm  _ remembrance _ intermingled with a gaping hole of confusion. It was a picture of Sara. It was a picture of  _ just  _ Sara. 

Something inside Sara felt broken. Tears threatened on the lids of her eyes, and she held the phone to her chest like some sort of homing beacon. She felt something,  _ remembered _ something. It was a feeling she hadn’t felt since she had been revived. Like a crack had opened up and suddenly the wind came blasting in, if only for a second, before someone taped the hole closed again. She wasn’t sure if she was crying because she was happy or devastated. 

“Nate,” she whispered, pulling the historian out of his investigations of Ava’s bookshelves. It took only a moment for him to notice the tears that had fallen on the phone screen, and ran over to Sara in worry.

“What? Did you find something?” he asked, looking down at the phone. Oh.

“Nate, I think I…” Sara whispered, the words caught in her throat as her breath hitched, “I - I don’t know what I think. But I know that I  _ need _ to find her. I need to understand what this,” she pointed aggressively to the screen, to the smiling, intimate photograph that only one person could have taken, “what  _ this  _ bullshit is.”  

“We will, Sara,” Nate assured, flashing her a small, kind smile and squeezing her knee. He wasn’t sure, far from it, but he had to be brave for her, had to put on a face because fuck, he was just as flummoxed as she was at all this. 

“There’s one last drawer I haven’t checked,” Nate informed her, patting her knee before brushing past her and shoving a key into the lowest desk drawer. It pulled out with a creak, unveiling a dozen or so empty manilla folders all stacked in a column. He removed each carefully, inspecting them and laying them flat on the floor. He was about to consider the investigation closed before he got to the end of the drawer: beneath the last folder was something else, something smaller―a journal, a  _ diary _ .

“Sara, look at this,” Nate whispered, handing Sara the journal. She took a breath, regaining her composure as he tossed it into her hands. A diary.  _ Ava’s _ diary. She opened the latch and to the first page. It was field notes. Research. She smiled because  _ of course _ Ava’s secret diary is just a bunch of essays on the workings of the timestream, what cat food is most nutritious, the birthdays of all of her time agents, the best ways to clean a butterfly knife. Warmth fluttered in her chest, but she shoved it down. She breezed through the diary, searching for anything of note when she finally noticed the dates on each entry. 

“These are from the future,” Sara’s breath hitched, “Nate, these are her notes from the parallel timeline.”

“Sara, I know,” he said, breath steady; he gestured towards her hands, “...look.”

Sara’s hand was wavering in and out of existence. Flashing. Becoming particles of air, moving back and forth as she grasped the rim of the diary. Her eyes shot up and she let the book fall to the floor, her hand instantly re-solidifying.

“Sara, there are multiple versions of history in existence right now, and all of them are competing to become your reality,” Nate whispered, holding Sara’s gaze. She steeled herself, knowing what would coming next, “there is no clear ways to proceed with this, but either you drop this, or you risk your whole existence fading into oblivion. It’s either you or Ava, Sara.”

Sara closed her eyes. Any other day before this and she knew she would have made the easy choice. She would have gone with her learned principles, known that to mess too much with the facts of the past means to mess extraordinarily with the present. (As  _ someone _ had reluctantly been screaming at her for months through a holographic projection.)

But she knew, deep down, that what she felt when she picked up Ava’s phone was something she couldn’t just  _ drop _ . It was a part of her now, for better or worse, something she’d have to reckon with when the day came. In other words, it was a tomorrow problem.

“We give it one more shot, alright?” Sara ordered, hand coming to sturdy itself on Nate’s shoulder, “we give her one more chance to be saved. If we can’t, we give up. I’ll give up.”

Nate nodded and smiled, and Sara smiled back. She would give her one more chance, that’s all. Even so, Sara knew her words were just words: there was a hole in her now, a memory, a chance at something she never knew she’d have again. She wasn’t letting it go without a good fucking fight. 


	4. intermission

_11 - 08 - 19_

I feel dumb writing this down.

Dumb because I should know better than anyone else how easy it is to self-incriminate. (Step one? Writing down detailed instructions for your unlawful plans.) But I figure―and I’ve done _a_ _lot_ of figuring this past week―it doesn’t really matter! If I can’t follow through on this, what’s left of my temporal existence is going to be orbiting around the Vanishing Point either way. Might as well layer on the evidence. And, oh, if anyone reads this: please feed my cat, Merlin, in my absence. He needs a cup a day of Pretty Kitty Extra Meaty. You can get it for half off at Whole Foods. Thank you! Now let’s proceed.

So 1: I triple-checked with Gideon. The bullets Sara was shot with were not standard-issue. Certainly not of the time period. They were infused with an untraceable amount of dwarf star aluminum, wreaking havoc on Sara’s insides slowly but surely. I wish I could just travel back in time and crush them in my hands and make them into a souffle. Maybe give Ray a protein shake.

2: I have determined that I cannot do that. Per simulation, there is only one way I can execute this plan in order to save both Sara and the timeline, and that is to solve the anachronism myself, and then to… stay in Chile. Die in Chile.

3: & to make sure Sara never comes looking.

3.2: & when she inevitably does anyway, to make sure she doesn’t try again.

3.3: As a worst case scenario: inform her of her future and god, just HOPE that past Sara is selfish enough to take the bait.  

(3.4: Hope she doesn’t remember. Because I don’t think my Sara would ever stop searching)

Signing off for the last time,

Ava Sharpe

P.S. Please remember to feed Merlin!

 

* * *

 

Sara’s eyelids welled as she snapped the diary shut. She bit her lip, taking in a deep breath and attempting to smother the feelings that had begun to overwhelm her. Her mind had felt like playdoh for the past 48 hours; her senses steamrolled not simply by visions, but by forgotten feelings, smells, touches, words. God―her hands felt permanently clammy. It was like the worst PMS of her life (with none of the pain and all of the _crying_ ).

“Gideon, what is _happening_ to me?” Sara whispered harshly, dropping the diary to the floor and groaning.

“Temporal memory displacement,” Gideon chirped, quick as ever, “although I’m sure you’ve already ascertained as much. But more specifically? You’re remembering what it was like to be in love with Ava Sharpe.”

Sara’s breath hitched. She had avoided using that word at all costs, even in her own passing thoughts. Refused to acknowledge the possibility, even in a parallel timeline. Love wasn’t something she’d entertained the idea of in a long time, not since...

But, still, she couldn’t help the way her chest constricted―something warm and utterly _happy_ settling there. She barely registered that she was sort of, kind of.. Smiling. That every word Ava wrote made butterflies come alive in Sara’s stomach.

“I just don’t believe it, Gideon,” Sara frowned, trying to recall the woman Ava Sharpe was _supposed_ to be. The woman she disdained, who threatened her life on multiple occasions, who fought her fist and nail until they both dropped, “that woman is just _so_ not my type.”

Her own words working against her, another flash of feeling hit Sara like a truck: her hands cupping Ava’s face, stroking lines down her cheeks, around her dimples. The way Ava’s sheepish smile made her feel whole again, lit fireworks in her stomach. The utter peace and contentment with Ava’s head in her lap, stroking her hair while they watched something dumb on Netflix.

 

_“Swamp thaang again? Really, babe?” Ava teased, running her hand absentmindedly down Sara’s thigh. Sara’s heart jumped at the contact, her girlfriend’s fingers dancing patterns over her skin. She felt so flushed, so alive, so incredulous that someone could make her feel like this even after everything. After death and even so._

_But what she said was: “Yes,” Sara grinned, “swamp thaang again.”_

 

“Christ!” Sara yelled, slamming her fist into the wall. The ship suddenly swerved as a time quake rippled through the timestream.

“Shit, did I do that?” Sara asked Gideon innocently, staring at her own fist.

“Not exactly,” Gideon replied, “or, well, not with your fists, Captain. The time quake was most likely caused by your sustained investigations into Agent Sharpe’s death.”

“She’s right about that!” Nate interjected, fast-walking into Sara’s office with his usual stack of papers and obscure textbooks, “but, good news, I think we can stop it. With only some minimal, you know, scars to the timeline.”

“What are you waiting for, then?” Sara asked, throwing her hands up. She still very much had the need to punch something.

“Okay, so, this hypothesis is untested, but: I think there’s a way we can locate a loophole,” Nate began, shuffling through a Chilean history textbook, “I read all of Sharpe’s diary entries, and she mentions that a future teammate of ours―Lari? Jari?―manages to simulate different outcomes in history in order to locate loopholes in time. Allows for different minor outcomes without disrupting the timeline.”

Sara tried her best to focus on what Nate was saying, but the best she could do was watch his lips form different words as her mind raced. All she could think about was _her_. It was like her brain was stuck in Ava Sharpe quicksand, and every time she budged she just fell farther in.

“Sorry, Nate, but please just get to the point,” Sara huffed, closing her eyes sharply, “my brain is literally on fire. On _fire_ , Heywood. Whatever you’re talking about, can you please put it in terms of kicking and punching?”

Nate laughed nervously, watching with caution as the Captain’s face went from angry to seething to frustrated to… happy?... and back again.

“You look like you’re, like, glitching,” Ray commented from a few feet away, eyebrows furrowed. Sara shot him a glare, and he quickly shuffled away, raising his hand in apology.

“Since Agent Sharpe is technically dying in the _past_ , there is no way we can go back in time and try to stop her before she leaves for Chile. So the only way to fix the anachronism, save your life _and_ save Ava’s life is to... return her to the future after the anachronism has been fixed. To, you know, restore her version of the timeline.”

“How is that a loophole?” Sara questioned, eyebrow raised.

“Because, well, we’re changing the past by changing the future,” Nate explained, massaging his temples, “it’s complicated. But if we let Ava fulfill her plan and then drop her off back in her reality… _this_ version of us ceases to exist. _We_ become the aberration.”

Sara squinted her eyes, taking in the information.

“So what? We just blow up or something?” Sara pursed her lips.

“Oh, no, no,” Nate laughed, “not that dire. It’s just, our memories will be intermingled with those of our parallel selves. We merge, effectively.”

Sara’s breath hitched. So that would mean… Her and Ava would be…   _in love?_

“Yes, it is what you’re thinking,” Nate squeezed her shoulder, “but you won’t lose free will, Sara. The future is still what you make it, regardless of what reality wins out. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that destiny is a myth.”

Sara nodded, looking away.

  
“Yeah,” she coughed, her mind drifting to Ava’s diary. To what she _did_ for Sara, to the sacrifice she was willing to make for her... “destiny’s a myth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so merlin being ava's cat is adopted from the fic "all these roads lead back to you" by Phoebmonster. do check it out, it's great. & i called this section "intermission" because it is firstly, short, as well as serving as an intermission between the two timelines that are about to blow up in both sara and ava's faces. lots of lovey-funny-fluffy stuff coming in the next chapter. gonna be a long one, too. as always, let me know what you thought!


	5. el palacio; donde que ella recordaba

Back in the sixth grade, Sara learned about a perceptual condition called synesthesia. It’s when someone can taste colour, smell sound, feel words; it’s a condition of the senses which doesn’t just alter your reality, it completely reworks it. It offers you a new axil of experience, an unexplainable relationship between things. 

Remembering Ava Sharpe was a lot like sudden, late in life synesthesia. Everything Sara read, felt, smelled,  _ touched _ triggered a correlated memory. Donuts were Ava bringing her a Boston Creme from Dunkin’. The smell of Martin’s Earl Gray tea was Ava brewing a mug in the morning, dressed in a silly polkadot robe. Even her dumb  _ butterknife _ was Ava, sparring with her in the kitchen in their pajamas.

Opening her eyes, Sara stared out into the timestream ahead of her. From the captain’s seat, nothing seemed real. Outside the timeship was just a sea of blues and greens, abstract shapes that made up the timeline. She was a sailor in impermanent waters, bobbing up and down in the ripples of time―a notion she used to find relaxing. Now it felt like a lie. It felt like every moment separated from Ava was a distraction. 

“I need a drink,” Sara groaned, lifting the seat’s harness. She made it barely two steps before finding herself face-to-face with Nate Heywood.  _ What a surprise. _

“Please let me have a drink,” Sara choked out, exasperated. He gave her a soft smile, patting her softly on the shoulder.  _ That was definitely a no. _

“Yeah, no,” he shook his head, “the more time you wait, the worse this is going to get for you, Sara. I’d say take some painkillers, but I’m not sure that’s going to make you feel less.. uh... in..?”

Sara narrowed her eyes, “don’t you  _ dare _ use the L word. I am merely under the influence of… time… space… memory… problems.” 

Her attempt at intimidation was lost under her mumbling. Nate didn’t like seeing Sara like this, as amusing as it may be. He only hoped that being in closer proximity to Ava would lessen the effects. 

“So are you going to address the team, or?” Nate quirked an eyebrow. Sara gave a noncommittal shrug, but mumbled out an order to Gideon to announce an important family meeting. It didn’t take long for everyone to shuffle out of their other activities to come to the aid of their (increasing disheveled, looks like she hasn’t slept in three days) captain. 

“So, Cap, you have a plan or what?” Jax smiled.

Sara planted her hands firmly on her hips, putting on a facade somewhat resembling her usual confidence. Not that it really helped―it was hard for her to maintain a train of thought for anything beyond thirty seconds. Turns out, continually and unstoppably remembering your past (future?) relationship with your ex-enemy is a hell of a drug.

“Well, okay,” Sara took in a breath, rubbing her eyes, “Ava―I mean Director―I mean Agent Sharpe is dead. This is an aberration. We’re legends, so naturally we are in the business of fixing those. If we fix this correctly, Ava won’t die, I won’t die, you guys won’t die, and we can all drink a fucking pint and take a long, long nap. Sound good?”

Mick gave her a firm thumbs up. She flashed him a smile. The rest of the team, however? Not encouraging. Half of them looked concerned, the other half minorly frightened. Was she not being clear?

“Any questions?” Sara threw up her hands, and then paused, “oh, and did anyone remember to feed Merlin?”

No response. Nate shook his head, mouthing  _ no _ .

“Ava is going to be so mad,” Sara whispered to herself. Shit. She didn’t even  _ know _ that Sharpe had a cat like a week ago. When did she start caring about the stupid cat? She was a dog person. Wasn’t she a dog person?

“Um, Captain, not to interrupt, but how exactly are we going to execute this whole thing?” Ray interjected, becoming increasingly doubtful about Sara’s ability to keep her eyes open, much less lead a team. Sara bit her lip. She was babbling, wasn’t she? She was definitely babbling. Oh god. Was she becoming sappy? Did Ava make her sappy?

“Yes, yes, duh,” Sara said, straightening out her collar and driving all thoughts of the woman out of her brain, to her best ability, “so we enter Chile just as Ava―Agent Sharpe―takes out Leonardo, our time pirate. We sneak into the presidential palace, Ray and Nate dressed as guards. They figure out where Sharpe is being detained, and I sneak in to get her out with Jax as my backup. Stein will pilot the ship to my destination so we can get my girl out of there and back to 2019.”

Sara gritted her teeth and smiled. She sustained a whole four sentences without thinking about― _ fuck _ , did she call Ava her  _ girl? _ Her heart was fluttering again. Everyone was staring at her.

“Did I say we had all day?” Sara shouted. Half the team scurried away, not trying to stir the captain further. 

“I still think she’s glitching,” Ray whispered to Nate. Sara shot him another look. 

“I am fine,” Sara said calmly, annunciating each word, “am I undergoing what feels like a brain transplant? Maybe. But don’t forget that I have died, Palmer. Died! I’ll get over some gooey-wooey feelings.” She raised her hands up in the air to emphasize her point. It did not seem to make an effect. Ray just smiled at her sadly.

“You know, I went through a similar thing, Sara, if you didn’t forget,” Stein interrupted, taking Sara’s attention away from glaring at Ray, “I know how troubling it all feels. So overwhelming. But the worst thing you can do is to try and suppress it.”

“Who says I’m suppressing anything?” Sara squinted, the lie even too blatant for even her to ignore. 

“It’s odd to suddenly care for someone you barely know,” Stein said earnestly, looking Sara directly in the eyes, “odder even I imagine to care for someone you previously disdained. But it is all the same. Writing off my adoration for Lily as a consequence of time travel only made the pain that much greater. Once I accepted it, accepted  _ her _ , for what she really was―my new reality, my incredible daughter―the pain fell away. It was like bandaging a hole.”

Stein’s words hit Sara like a whip. Her shoulders relaxed, the mounting tension she had been holding in her spine finally releasing. There it was, the thought, as bright as day: _ I might love Ava Sharpe _ . Her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest. She repeated the phrase in her mind several times, floating it around on her tongue experimentally. It still felt foreign, still didn’t carry the weight it was supposed to, but it felt freeing nonetheless. She would let it  _ be _ , even if it wasn’t real yet. Even if it didn’t make sense yet.

“Thank you,” she said softly, offering Martin a small smile. He just nodded, turning on his heel to go chastise Jax for something or other. 

“Less glitching,” Ray observed, flashing both Nate and Sara his signature goofy smile. Sara just shook her head.

“Okay, enough therapy,” Sara ordered, bringing Gideon’s interface online, “Gideon, steer us a course for Chile, 1988.”

“Affirmative, Captain Lance.”

 

 

 

Staring straight ahead at La Moneda Palace, Sara felt for once less like a time tourist and more like she was visiting a distant relative. Santiago had become a second home these past few weeks. Marveling at the natural beauty all around her―the Patagonia mountains, the friendly and engaging townspeople―Sara smiled ruefully. 

_ Maybe when this is all over _ … Her thoughts trailed off, a flash of Ava in her mind again. She quickly shook the sensation away;  _ was she planning their honeymoon, for fucks sake? _

Focusing on the sight in front of her, Sara could tell instantly that the place had taken its fair share of beatings; bullet holes still dusted the exterior from the bombings of 1973, history worn brazenly on the shoulders of such an enormous structure. 

“Lucky for us, Chilean history books tell us that Pinochet had an underground complex constructed during the palace’s rebuilding process to house prisoners and serve as an escape route during wartime,” Nate relayed over the comms, “per the architect's drawings, there should be an entrance to the underground in the guard’s chambers.”

“Easy peasy,” Sara smirked, making her way past the gates and climbing onto a windowsill on the palace’s west wing, “you guys in yet?”

“Affirmative,” Ray chirped, “we took out the head guard and are currently embarking on a journey down to the  _ dungeons _ . Spooooky...”

“It’s called the bunker, actually,” Nate corrected. She could practically hear the eye-rolling, the brotherly animosity. She could definitely hear Ray huff over the microphone.

“Settle down, boys,” Sara chuckled, “just find out where they’re keeping Ava, and get out. You won’t make it past the guards outside hauling her out of there.”

“Well, shouldn’t be a problem!” Ray yelped, “they seemed to have found us first. Says here that they’re keeping an―ouch, not the face!―American in cell 89. Oof!”

Sara winced as she heard the mic get crushed under someone’s fist. She took in a breath. They could handle themselves. Now it was up to her to get Ava out of here. 

“Jax, go help the wonder twins, I’ve got this,” she whispered into her comm as she waved down to him. After he got the message, she plunged her dagger into the window and broke through the glass, ducking through the hole and rolling into the hallway. Thankfully, the staff was sufficiently distracted by the commotion in the yard. 

_ Thank God the boys were smart enough to bring the fight outside. _

She snuck easily downstairs. The bunker was built like a maze, designed perfectly to keep captives dazed and frightened. Slipping through the dark corridors, it wasn’t long until she located cell 90. So, naturally, cell 89 must be―

“ _ Ava _ ,” Sara choked, breathless. Blonde hair cascaded down a bruised cheek, eyes hooded with resignation as the woman stared aimlessly at the floorboards. Sara could see that she had managed to piece together what looked like a graphite pencil ( _ a clever way to pick a lock _ ). However, the lock being very much intact, it appeared that she had not even attempted to do so. Instead, she had opted to draw a picture of Merlin―fuck, why does she even know what that dumb cat is supposed to look like?―in the gravel. Beside herself with bubbling emotions, Sara felt her lips curl into a soft smile. Ava was locked up, about to be executed probably, and she was... drawing a picture of her cat.

“Sara?” Ava looked up suddenly, hurt apparent in her expression, “no, shit, Sara.  _ No. _ You’re not supposed to be here. They’ll kill you, Sara. Just like they did before.”

Not even Ava’s scared frown could make Sara’s heart stop beating, but it did ground her. She shot the lock off the cell with ease, opening the door and making her way to Ava within seconds.

“God, baby, what did they do to you?” Sara whispered, the words spilling out of her mouth. The sight of Ava was so shocking that she had barely thought to filter herself, hadn’t even noticed her own freudian slip. Ava’s expression of fear morphed into one of confusion, her hand reaching out to touch Sara’s forearm, grasping around her wrist.

“What did you just call me?” Ava said softly, eyes pouring over with something Sara was finally starting to recognize.

“Oh,” Sara recalled sheepishly, her cheeks flushing, “Agent?”

They stared gently into each other's eyes for what felt like hours, unspoken questions filling the air. Sara finally broke the contact, staring down at her hands before putting on her usual apathetic expression. This was still Ava Sharpe.  _ Agent  _ Sharpe. A bunch of maybe-phony memories didn’t change that.

“So, you gonna knock me out again? ‘Cause you better not,” Sara smirked coyly, “you’ve done enough damage setting fire around my goddamn subconscious for the better part of a week.”

Ava’s eyebrows knitted, amusement and fear and utter  _ confusion _ sitting there. It stirred something in Sara’s stomach, gave her the urge to kiss Ava’s cheek, tell her to  _ just relax, baby. _

_ Jesus _ . Sara groaned. So was this what Nate meant by  _ merging _ ? Because it seemed like parallel Sara needed to get a hobby. She was starting to think about kissing Ava more than she thought about blinking.

Ava bit her lip, seemingly about to finally say something when Ray and Nate came rushing in, a posse of Chilean guards on their trail.

“Sorry guys, but we gotta go like, now!” Ray shouted, grasping a gaping hole in his atom suit. Sara felt adrenaline pump through her veins, and instinct kicked in. She’d deal with other Sara’s invading presence when she wasn’t five minutes away from being dead in 1988. She grabbed Ava’s hand and dragged her upwards. She saw the woman wince, finally noticing the deep bruises around her left leg. Sara felt anger surge through her at the sight, the blood lust that she worked so hard to calm bubbling up in her stomach.

She shoved it down. Ava didn’t need an assassin. She needed  _ her _ . 

_ Shit. _ Did she really just think that? She internally cringed. 

Taking in one last breath, her eyes fell on Ava’s again.  _ She looks so beautiful, even with a stupid black eye _ . She’d unpack this all later. Right now, they had to run.

Run.  _ Run. _

_ “You should have run, Sara,” Ava choked out, her breath caught in her throat. On board the Waverider, she was sitting in a medical bed with Sara’s head in her lap. Sara was badly beaten up, her right arm and legs limp.  _

_ At Ava’s words, Sara opened her eyes. Fighting off the pain, she simply smirked. _

_ “What? And have let those goons slice and dice you into sushi? Nuh-uh, no fun,” Sara’s eyes were over-pouring with affection, her good arm reaching up to nudge a tear off Ava’s cheek. Ava choked out a laugh, meeting Sara’s eyes and drowning in them.  _

_ “I - I think I might be in love with you,” Ava sighed wistfully, letting the admission fall out of her lips. _

_ Sara’s breath hitched, pain taking a backseat to the warmth that was spreading through her chest like wildfire.  _

_ “Well good thing you think it,” Sara bit her lip, her heart beating faster than blood could pump to it, “because I know it, Ava Sharpe.” _

The next thing Sara knew she was back on the Waverider. 

She hadn’t blacked out, not quite, but the adrenaline had taken over; busy thrashing through foes, the feeling of Ava’s hands in hers had sent her over the edge―her body engaged in a  well-oiled routine, her mind had drifted through memories, vivid images from another life live-streaming through her cortex.

She had learned a lot about what their relationship was like recently. But witnessing her own love confession? It was a lot to process. It was more than just a dream, more than just a memory. It was  _ really her _ saying those things,  _ feeling _ those things. Fuck, and who’s she kidding, she still felt them right now. 

Her hands were shaking. She looked down at them, and they were covered in blood. She had let go of Ava’s hand at some point when she entered, the loss of contact jarring her back into reality. Nate and Ray were looking at her expectantly, searching her expression for some sort of next move. Ava wasn’t looking at her all, her eyes drilled into the floor.

“Do we have everyone?” She asked, her breath shaky. She managed to tear her eyes away from Ava and towards Nate. He looked worried.

“Yeah, everyone’s on board. But you look seriously… shaken, Sara. You should take a minute. We can take Agent Sharpe to the medbay,” Nate said, his tone unusually serious. She must have looked like a real maniac. She looked down at her hands again, the shaking having only gotten worse.  _ This certainly isn’t from smacking a bunch of fascists.  _

She nodded weakly, risking a final look at Ava. Nate leading her politely towards the medbay, Ava looked back. _ Fuck _ ―she had that look in her eyes. The same one Sara had seen in her vision. The same one that said―

_ I think I might be in love with you _ .

Sara bit her lip until it bled, her heart thudding. 

“Mick?” she called out into the empty air. She heard a hefty  _ eh? _

  
“Make that  _ four _ pints,” she answered, “and get them here  _ now _ .” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy!!! we're nearing the true reunion, folks! next chapter is going to be THE big one. get ready for an emotional doozy. as always, let me know your thoughts/feelings/emotional rants.


	6. & entonces fin.

To say she was avoiding Ava would be an… understatement. She was all bravado and heroism the day before in Chile, swooping into Ava’s cell like He-Man. But the idea of facing Ava for real, with no exits, excuses, or armed guards on her tail? Legit  _ terrifying _ . Nope. Not gonna happen. 

This whole “timelines merging” thing, or, as she affectionately named it―the timestream iteration of Lindsay Lohan’s Freaky Friday―was more emotionally compromising than listening to a stand up special of Damien Darhk monologues. Thankfully, alcohol seemed to slow things down a bit. But facing Ava Sharpe? 

A no. Didn’t matter if she was from the future. Didn’t matter if she wasn’t really  _ hers _ . That beautiful idiot was going to give her a seizure.

“Sara, and this is coming from me, but please grow up,” Nate advised, shaking his head at her as she stared intently at the floor of the Waverider. Sara knew it was ridiculous to lock yourself in the laundry room. Perhaps unprofessional. Maybe a little childish. She did not care.

“I  _ have _ grown up, Nate,” Sara glared, “and as a grown-up, I have accumulated your usual amount of reasonable coping mechanisms. Personally, I lock myself in small spaces to avoid women I may have wronged and drink strawberry vodka out of a water bottle.”

Nate’s mouth hung open as he noticed the water bottle in her hands. He moved to snatch it, but Sara whipped it away, petulant. 

“Don’t even try,” she squinted, taking another sip. She grimaced. Shit got the job done, but it was so, so gross. She handed the now-empty bottle to Nate, “now you can have it. Cheers.”

“Nope,” Nate frowned, not having it for one more second, “this is not happening. I’m calling Ray.”

Nate stepped away, dramatically gesturing to his ear piece as he spoke, “Ray, Sara’s day drinking. Yep, she locked herself in the laundry room. Uh-huh, bro, I know. Yep, glitching would be an understatement. Please come save me, she looks like she’s about to put me in a headlock.”

Just as she moved to do so, her inebriation caught up with her. She flopped unceremoniously off of the laundry machine and slumped onto the floor. She looked a lot like a cat on sedatives. 

This was definitely not affording her any cool points. She might have to give Nate the flasher for this. 

“Don’t remember this,” Sara grimaced, eventually finding her footing, “and I get it, okay?  _ I get it _ . Point taken, big guy. I’ll go talk to stupid Agent… Ava. Stupid, dumb, gorgeous… fuck―whatever. I’ll talk to her, you win.” 

“Um, Sara, I did not mean confront her like  _ this _ ,” Nate warned her, eyes wide, as she power-walked past him with a sense of authority that definitely did not match her current state. 

“Oh, uh, hey Sara!” Ray chimed in uncomfortably as Sara ascended the stairs with minimal stumbling. Sara brushed past him as she headed for the med-bay, her eyes drilled forward. 

Whatever confidence had bubbled up due to the alcohol was quickly squashed the moment she entered the doorway. The sight of Ava―real, actual obnoxiously attractive Ava Sharpe―just about knocked the wind out of her.  _ Shit. Okay, Sara, you got this. She looks so gorgeous. Shit. _

“You―hi,” Sara coughed, attempting to casually lean on the doorway, “how are things?”

Ava, who had been all but twiddling her thumbs in concentration, looked up to Sara with genuine surprise. 

“Sara…” she began, her voice low. Turmoil was obviously stirring behind Ava’s eyes. Sara frowned, frustration bubbling. Why did Ava get to the be the one in the mood? Sara was in a mood, too. She had her own problems. She was the one whose very existence was fading into the background the longer she played savior. She was the one who, against her very own will, was falling in…

Fuck.  _ Stop self-pitying.  _

The alcohol had been doing a good job of numbing her feelings for the past few hours, but seeing Ava ripped the bandaid clean off. Her heart was thudding again against her chest. She hid it with a frustrated sigh.

Sara waited patiently for Ava to speak, but the woman said nothing. Sara raised an eyebrow, signifying that she was going nowhere. 

“I’m going to stand here until you explain yourself, Sharpe, or so help me,” Sara guffed, giving Ava no out. 

Ava paused, seemingly considering her options. She finally drew a breath, and motioned for Sara to take a seat on the chair next to her. Sara gladly took the offer, finding standing a bit overwhelming at the moment. 

“I knew this would happen,” Ava started, letting the smallest smile cross her lips, “knew you would dumbly, selflessly run after me. Disobey orders. Run around Chile until you either released another time-ending demon or dragged me out by my nails. I guess I should at least be glad it wasn’t the former. Unless that happened, too. Did that happen?”

Ava, who hadn’t looked at her with an expression other than sad remorse in days, was finally offering Sara a look she could recognize: scrutiny. The expression usually made Sara want to argue with the bureaucrat ‘till exhaustion, all bravado and over-the-top defensiveness. Now all it did was make her smirk. 

“I don’t know, did it?” Sara teased, falling easily back into a dynamic she recognized. Ava rolled her eyes, pushing herself into a sitting position. 

“Sara, as Director―well, most likely  _ former _ Director―of the Time Bureau, I need to know about these things. What are we dealing with?” Ava squinted her eyes.

“What are we dealing with?” Sara laughed, the booze willing words out of her mouth, “well, Ms. Director Sharpe, we are dealing with  _ a lot _ right now. And by we I mean me, and by me I mean my head hurts like a  _ bitch _ , and all I want to do is take is a long, long nap, but noooo―the timestream is too busy using my consciousness for target practice.” She huffed, crossing her arms indignantly. 

Ava’s face dropped, worry evident there. “What―what do you mean? Are you okay, Sara?” Ava asked, reaching out to touch Sara’s arm instinctively. Sara bit her lip at the contact, a soothing sensation radiating through her. She grimaced, waiting for an unpleasant flash of memory, but none came. Reading her expression, Ava drew back her hand. Sara whimpered at the loss, her cheeks quickly flushing.

“Fuck,” Sara whispered, looking down with embarrassment, “pretend I didn’t… do that, please.”

“Sara, what did you mean the timestream was using you for target practice?” Ava bit her lip, ignoring Sara’s pleas. 

Sara looked up, masking her embarrassment with frustration, “oh, I don’t know, the fact that all I can think about is  _ you _ , all the damn time,” Sara muttered, meeting Ava’s eyes, “I’m just being flooded… with all of it... every single memory, Sharpe. The day you started staying on the Waverider. The first time I ever went to your apartment. Feeding your cat―fuck― _ Merlin _ while you were away. The time I got knocked out saving you from Julius Caesar. When you took care of me afterwards. When we had our first… kiss. Our first… everything.” Sara’s voice shook, frustration replaced by a wistful, defeated tone. Ava’s eyes poured into her, looking at her like she really  _ saw _ her for the first time since she boarded the ship last night.

“You… remember, then,” Ava whispered, tears prickling on her eyelids. She looked heartbroken.

Sara’s breath hitched; watching Ava’s tears, all of the emotions that Sara had been repressing for weeks suddenly overwhelmed her. She nodded furiously, reaching out despite herself to brush the tear from Ava’s cheek. Ava’s skin felt so warm, so  _ familiar _ under her thumb.

“ _ Of course _ I do, baby,” Sara choked out, the pet name coming off her lips like she’d said it a hundred times,“shit―it’s just,  _ you’re so beautiful _ . And―that’s not the point. The point is I suddenly have all these feelings and I have no idea what to do with them. Everything in me is screaming at me to lo―love you, but I don’t know… how.” 

Sara’s voice broke.

Without warning, everything Sara had built up came crashing down. The next thing she knew, she was sobbing uncontrollably, Ava holding her in the most delicate, loving grip. She cried into Ava’s shoulder as Ava spoke soothingly into her ear, tracing circles in Sara’s back.

“I’m  _ so sorry _ , Sara,” Ava whispered, clutching the back of Sara’s head as she sniffled into her shoulder, “if I knew saving you would hurt you so much… I never wanted you to feel―like you  _ had _ to love me, forced you into this like some game… I’m  _ so _ sorry.” 

Sara broke free of Ava’s grasp, a look of indignation on her face, “Ava―no, that’s not it at  _ all _ ” she sniffled, trying to regain her composure and failing, “just because I’m overwhelmed right now doesn’t mean… it doesn’t mean I don’t want this. Look at me.”

Ava studied Sara’s eyes, holding onto her wrist like a lifeline. Sara smiled at her, tears still staining her cheeks.

“I don’t know exactly  _ how _ we got here,” Sara said slowly, affection pouring from her eyes, “but all I know is that you make me―or Sara, somewhere, future Sara, whatever―you make me so fucking happy, it hurts. I can feel it everywhere. It’s not just the strawberry vodka.”

Ava choked out a laugh, wiping away a tear from Sara’s cheek.

“What are you saying?” Ava asked lightly. For the first time in weeks, she felt the faint glow of optimism settle in her stomach: the feeling that maybe she  _ did it _ , that maybe things could work out―

“That you’re a huge pain in my ass, obviously,” Sara smirked, wiping her eye as her gaze dipped briefly down to Ava’s lips and back up again. What Sara meant was that she loved her. But she didn’t know how to say that. Still didn’t know what that meant, “but you make me really happy. Make some  _ Sara _ happy, somewhere. And there’s nothing that I want more than to feel that way for as long as I can until I get thrown into another pit, or time prison.”

Ava smiled softly, her eyes a mixture of pain and―something else. Something Sara hadn’t seen before. Hadn’t been privy to, not in this version of her life. It made her heart melt. She wanted so badly to touch Ava, to feel physically the feelings that had been whirling at sixty miles per hour inside of her head. More than anything else, she just wondered how it felt to kiss her.  

_That answers that_ ― _loving_ _Ava made her a total fucking softie._

And, begrudgingly, she was starting to be okay with that.

Before Sara could open her mouth to say as much, the timeship suddenly jerked, a quake permeating through the waves of time. Gideon’s voice faltered, and red lights began to flash from every corner of the timeship. A chorus of buzzing noises echoed from the core of the ship.

“Well, I know whose fault that was,” Ava whispered, biting down her lip.

Sara, immediately sobering up, gave her a quizzical look, “what? What’s going on?”

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Ava smiled sadly, “well―not  _ this _ me, at least. The timeline is cementing, and my continued presence in 2018 is becoming very… apparent. You could say the time janitors are trying to clean up a mess.”

Sara snickered, overwhelming affection filling her at Ava’s words, “ _ time janitors _ ,” she laughed “that’s what I used to call you, like, two weeks ago.”

“God, I forgot how rude you were,” Ava balked, but there was no malice there, “not that my Sara is a saint, or anything…”

The words  _ my Sara _ stung her like a needle. For as much as she felt for Ava, this still wasn’t right. Her memories weren’t just her own.  _ This _ Ava belonged with a different Sara. The more time Ava spent alive, the more time Sara spent becoming an…

Aberration. An  _ aberration. _

_ “The only way to fix the anachronism, save your life and save Ava’s life is to... return her to the future after the anachronism has been fixed. You don’t get shot, Ava doesn’t get shot, but...” _

_ “How is that a loophole?” Sara questioned, eyebrow raised. _

_ “Because, well, we’re changing the past by changing the future,” Nate explained, massaging his temples, “If we let Ava fulfil her plan and then drop her off back in her reality… this version of us ceases to exist. We become the aberration.” _

She swallowed down her nerves. She had to do this. For Ava. For  _ herself _ somewhere. 

“Ava, we have to get you back there―then―whatever―now,” Sara swallowed, heart filling with uncertainty. She hoped Ava had no idea what would become of Sara―of this version of herself―once Ava landed back in 2019. 

Gone. A timeline that never happened.

“ _ Sara _ ,” Ava’s voice hitched, and Sara knew in that instant that she  _ knew _ , “the thing is… as much as I want you to bring me back… as much as I  _ miss _ you. You can’t. If you do that,  _ this _ you is gone. I refuse to let that happen.”

Sara shook her head in disbelief. She couldn’t believe that there existed a version of Ava Sharpe that cared so deeply about some person that she never even really knew, some iteration of blonde hair and blue eyes that barely knew what love even was yet, who hadn’t even fed the fucking cat, for god's sake. The fact that Ava would sacrifice herself for  _ her _ , for a lesser version of the woman she was in love with.  

_ In love with _ . Sara’s heart stung. This wasn’t her life to live, not yet; but it didn’t mean she wasn’t jealous. She bit her lip, smiling up at Ava, at that  _ face _ . How could she ever forgive herself for sacrificing a life spent shared with that adorable  _ face _ ?

“You’re gorgeous when you’re stupid,” Sara smiled, so soft and so overwhelmed with affection, that she barely noticed her hand go transparent when she knocked Ava across the head.  

  
  
  


 

Some say that, in the theory of parallel universes, it is impossible to  _ cease _ existence. One can merely pause it, play it, and replay―time is as flexible as rubber, and we are just lucky to live in a version of it that suits our interests, or unlucky enough to live in a version that doesn’t. 

The last thing Sara sees when they drop Ava off in 2019 is grass. Green as can be. And she smiles―because it's grass from their lawn. Grass that surrounds  _ their _ apartment in D.C. From the timeship, she can see her own reflection in the apartment mirror. A blonde woman in a nightgown brushing her teeth, flossing obnoxiously in the mirror. She sees another woman run up from behind her, and Sara’s heart is bursting―

And then nothing. Darkness. Silence. Pause. Another time resumes.

 

 

 

“Sara?” Ava asked, voice low with trepidation as she knocked on the bathroom door. Music was blasting as soon as she arrived―some remix of Mistletoe by Justin Bieber, dear god―leading her instantly to the bathroom where a speaker played over the noise of shower water.

“Mm, Aves? You say something?” Sara called over the music, shutting off the shower, “you know I can’t hear after that time Nate stuck a Beebo recording in my eardrum on April Fools, I still need to kill him―”

Sara turned around and took in a sharp breath. Ava stood there, completely destroyed: tears stroked down her cheeks, a ripped jacket layered over trembling shoulders. You could tell she was trying to keep a brave face, her lips curled ever so. 

“Who did this? Because I  _ will _ go League on their ass, just name names,” Sara cursed, rushing over to Ava in one motion and taking her hand. Ava let out a breath at the contact, the realness of the grip―this was  _ her  _ Sara, the love and the tenderness (and the ridiculous bravado.)

“You,” Ava smiled sadly, barely choking out words, “you dumbass.”

Sara froze, taking in her words, “me?” she whispered, afraid of what Ava might say next.

“Not like that, silly,” Ava whispered, taking a hand and running it through Sara’s hair. She smoothed it over her forehead, appreciating the way Sara’s lip trembled with the motion―just like in 2018. Ava shivered. She hated how it felt like she had come home and broken it all in one day, “you  _ saved  _ me. Again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOOOO that was that, folks!!! i know it was intensely bittersweet, but for me this fic was always about how Sara & Ava are always saving each other and will always save eachother, better interests be damned (even their own). i have an epilogue coming after this that is PURE fluff and will definitely make you feel better if this one hurt as much as it healed.
> 
> hopefully the plot wasn't too hard to follow, i have another fic planned and coming very soon that will be a lot less plot heavy and more fluff heavy, so look out for that if you want! & you can always follow my tumblr @ shawcarter and shoot me any prompts/questions you want. thanks so much for reading and enjoy the epilogue coming on friday!


	7. the epilogue

Once, when training a new agent, he had asked Ava seriously:

“Have you ever done any work that you regret?”

She had said, without hesitation, no: of course she hadn’t. As far as she was concerned, work done at the direction of the Time Bureau was akin to public service. She did what she had to do in pursuit of the greater good. Individual deeds, wants, needs: they all took the backseat.

This, for a long time, had been Ava’s premier excuse in why she was terrible at forming personal connections. She wasn’t _cold_ , she was sensible. Wasn’t _emotionally blocked_ , just profesional. Her superiors lauded her year after year, constantly remarking at her unquestioning dedication to the organization. Ava Sharpe followed rules. Ava Sharpe took orders. Ava Sharpe did not let herself get in the way of the mission.

The moment Sara Lance had opened her mouth, she became an instant exception to these rules. Not in the lovey dovey way, either―Ava was talking about the pure disdain, pure _anger_ , the unadulterated fucking frustration. What was so devastatingly annoying about Sara was also what Ava came to love about her later―that she was the exception to every rule. She didn’t play by anyone’s playbook, especially not Ava’s.

Ava looked over to her alarm clock. It was 3:30 AM. She hadn’t slept a minute since Sara had dropped her back in her timeline.

Shit―she knew her clock was set to wake her up in just three hours. She sighed, exhausted. Still, her eyes remained open, droopy but unable to rest.

The truth was, for the very first time, that innocent question had begun to haunt her. Regret. Because, _fuck_ ―she risked a look at the woman beside her, and her heart skipped at the innocent way Sara was curled up by her side, eyelids peacefully fluttering―she was so _happy_ to be back, but…

Why did she deserve to be the happy one? Why did Sara, somewhere, have to sacrifice herself to protect her? Ava knew that this line of questioning was pointless, that eventually she would have to realize that there is no logic to the timeline. There is math, yes, probability, of course―but the morality of it? The reasoning behind who lived and who died? There was no absolute truth.

Just like there was no reason that _she_ was the twelfth clone that Rip chose. Rip could have chosen any other iteration of her. That version of her could have fallen in love with Sara, too. And Sara could have fallen in love with that one. Was she truly here because of who she was, or because of a silly game of chance?

“Babe,” a voice from behind her yawned, “you’re starting to scare me, sitting up so straight like that and staring at the wall. I feel like I’m about to get horror movie-d.”

At Sara’s voice, her internal philosophical ramblings suddenly seemed much less pressing. Still, she couldn’t sleep. The voices in her head were too strong, the _uncertainty_ ―

“Hey, idiot,” Sara chided, reluctantly sitting up and squeezing Ava gently on the shoulder, “look at me.”

And Ava did. She _really_ looked at Sara, falling into those baby blue eyes like she had a million times this year. She couldn’t help but smile just a bit, the skin on her shoulder feeling light as a feather where Sara had touched her. Sara bit her lip, moving her hand so it dropped to the nape of Ava’s neck, and pressed her palm down over Ava’s chest. Ava’s breath caught, the pressure settling right over her heartbeat. Ava nearly cried, recognizing the gesture―it was the same thing she always did to Sara, the same caress she gave her everytime Sara woke up screaming, crying, _remembering_.

“You’re so perfect,” Sara whispered, using her other hand to tuck a strand of Ava’s hair behind her ear. Ava sniffled, feeling so fucking guilty, so _undeserving_ , but―“you’re so perfect, Ava. If that dumb voice in your head thinks otherwise, they can bring the fight right to me, okay? Making _my_ girlfriend feel insecure? Mm-mm, nice try. Over my dead body.”

 _Over my dead body._ The words sent a tremble down her spine, finally unsettling all the tension that had been sitting there. Tears escaped her eyes, and she began to cry relentlessly, hand coming up to hold Sara’s over her chest.

“Shit, not my intention at _all_ , shit, Aves, come here,” Sara panicked, dragging Ava forward and into her arms, “what is it? What’s wrong?”

Ava, who usually prided herself on her succinctness, could not keep it in any longer―

“I watched you almost die because of these stupid fucking _bullets_ and―and I went back in time to Chile a gazillion times and broke all of the Time Bureau guidelines and it was as _a lot_ and no-one fed Merlin, but I saved you, somehow, but only because you saved _me_ because I kept fucking _dying_ trying to save _you_ but you just wouldn’t let that _happen_ ,” Ava rattled into Sara’s shoulder, holding onto her stupid polka-dot gown with a death grip, “but you finally figured out a fucking loophole―I could kill Zari, oh―but the problem was that it wasn’t really a loophole at all because you had to _die_ , Sara. You had to die so I could come back… here. And be with you. The you that I love so, so much. And I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you.”

It felt like eons passed as Sara let Ava cry into her shoulder. Ava almost began to worry that her suspicions had been confirmed, that it really was too much for Sara. That even the woman who had seen it all had finally seen too much.

“I just have one question,” Sara said, voice unwavering; she let Ava fall back a bit, so they were eye-to-eye, “did you make out with me? Like me from the past? Like did we do it?”

Ava’s mouth was agape. _Was she kidding?_

“Are you kidding?” Ava all but shouted, shoving Sara gently on the chest, “that’s all you have to say? I just _killed_ you, Sara. Effectively.”

Sara grinned, looking at Ava as if that was the most adorable notion she had ever heard.

“I don’t feel dead. Do I look dead?” Sara mocked, grinning as she raised her arms and legs like she was some sort of robot, “I’d ask Gideon, but I don’t want to wake her. Really, from what you said, it seems like you saved me, if anything. No bullet wounds here.” Sara playfully rolled up her nightgown.

Ava shook her head, shooting Sara a loving glare. Ava might not have killed her, not really, but Sara was certainly going to get her killed someday. Her stomach swam with butterflies, her whole chest heavy with affection.

“So you just don’t care? You don’t care that some other you just faded into existence just so I could come here and make sure someone fed Merlin?” Ava teased, but insecurity was still written into her features. Sara rolled her eyes and blew out a breath. She took Ava’s hand and raised it to her mouth, pressing a gentle kiss to her knuckles.

“Let’s just say, I know myself,” Sara smiled, running her hand up Ava’s arm until it was strung around her shoulder, pulling her close. She traced a soft pattern onto Ava’s back, and Ava’s eyelashes fluttered, “I think I had other things in mind when I went and blew myself up. I don’t think I would have let you get away just to _feed your cat_ , babe.”

To make her point, she finally leaned in and nudged her nose to Ava’s, grinning as she connected their lips. The contact surprised Ava, but it was only a matter of seconds until she relaxed into the kiss, a rush of calm, of pure _bliss_ settling in her stomach as she felt her world fall back into place. She thought, brazenly, for a moment, that no other clone could have been made for this. Sara was hers. She smiled against Sara’s lips, pressing into Sara and nudging their knees together. _Hers._

After a minute, Sara begrudgingly broke the kiss. Ava frowned, letting out a small, adorable noise as Sara pulled back. Sara’s heart fluttered, feeling like she’d never heard anything better. More _perfect_.

“You know why it doesn’t matter, Aves?” Sara asked―grinning, simply _glowing_ in a way that made Ava think she wasn’t capable of lying―“because that only proves to me something I already knew. That you and me―that this is worth everything. That coming back to life was worth it. That losing my soul was―well, I wouldn’t say it was _fun_ ―but it was worth it to get _here_ . Because I’d fade into existence anyday if it meant somewhere, I could spend the rest of my life kissing you at four in the morning. That sounds _perfect_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that's all, folks!! i hope you enjoyed the journey as much as i did! your comments really made this all worthwhile. i can't wait to keep writing for these ladies. :)


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